


Guided Fate

by neveralarch



Series: Best_enemies comment fic [18]
Category: Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka
Genre: Comment Fic, Community: best_enemies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-17
Updated: 2010-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-23 20:02:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveralarch/pseuds/neveralarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short fic set before the Shalka webseries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guided Fate

Finding the Master's consciousness was really an accident. It turns out that the Master had pulled the record of his self out of the Matrix, keeping it instead on a memory drive that he constantly updated. After his execution on Skaro, the drive was confiscated by the Daleks, then sent to one of their conquered worlds for testing. It bounced around the galaxy for centuries until the Doctor came upon it in a curiosities shop in New New Atlanta. Something in it called to him, an odd piece of advanced technology in a bin of random junk. He got it for free, a gift from the elderly lady proprietor with her sweet southern American accent. Funny, the Doctor reflects, later, to find the Master in a city he would have sworn he wouldn't have been caught dead in.

The Doctor never could decide whether the accident was a happy one. It's one of many questions that haunts him as he slowly builds the android body, and then dithers over uploading the Master into it. In the end, he just does it. Accident or not, it's a terrible thing to think of the Master just languishing on a memory drive, unaware of the passage of time.

When the Master comes to, he just smiles, as if he had always expected to see the Doctor leaning over him, nervously asking if the servos are all working.

The Master calls it fate. He never bothers to point out that the memory drive incorporated a homing beacon.


End file.
